What they saw made them moan with horror. On the dry bed of the harbour, advancing in a ragged half-circle, as if going to dance hand-in-hand, were the children, singing as they went, certain of salvation. And, beyond them, far away towards the horizon, but coming closer with incredible speed, was the white crest of a great wave, higher than a tree, higher than a house, high as the church tower itself, coming at the speed of a galloping horse. The children, looking to Johann, or with their eyes on heaven, did not see it, did not see anything. They only understood their danger when they started to feel it. The water which had been sucking away from under their feet so they were triumphantly dry-shod on the sea bed, started to gurgle and flow forwards again. The smaller children were knee deep in moments; they looked down, and cried out, but their voices were drowned in the singing.

They pulled on the hands of the bigger children beside them, trying to get their attention, but the children swung hands gladly, and went on. Then they all heard it. Over the sound of their own Canticle they heard the deep terrible roar of the sea.

When they looked up, they saw the wave coming towards them, heard its full-throated rage, and knew that the water that had flowed away so quickly, emptying the harbour in mere moments, had turned on them and was coming back as one wave, as one great surge. At once, some of them cried out and spun around, broke the line and tried to run, thigh deep in water, as if they dreamed that they could outrun the sea. But most of them stood stock still, holding each other’s little hands and watching, open-mouthed, as the wall of the wave powered up to them and then fell down upon them and buried them in full fathoms in a second.

Moments later it hit the town. Boats that had been beached on the floor of the harbour were now thrown roof-high, tossed up and dropped down again. The first wave hit the quayside wall and crashed upwards like an eruption, and then, terrifyingly, beyond reason, flowed on, out of its bounds, rushing past houses, up alleyways, towards the market square where no sea had ever been. The quayside disappeared at once underwater, the panes of the windows of the inn smashing in a fusilade, as the waves breached the walls and poured inside the inn and into all the quayside houses. In Ishraq and Isolde’s bedroom the two girls flinched back as the windows popped like paper and the water poured in; they were waist deep in seconds and yet the wave still came on, the water still rose.

‘This way,’ Luca yelled beside them. He kicked out the frame of the window. Wood and the remaining horn panes of the window whirled away as the sea thrust him backwards. Soon the water in the room was up to their shoulders, Ishraq and Isolde off their feet, and flailing in the icy seawater as they gripped each other’s hands, bobbing in the turbulence as the waves crashed into the little room and washed out again.